Finche cracked open the file for real this time, trying to make sense of it.
Details, details. Police raided a suspected crack house in a tenement on the east side. Nearly all the top floors were inhabited or controlled by the 38th Street Black Gangsta Disciples. Most of the big guys were gone, but they busted a decent number of middle management traffickers. One policeman suffered a gunshot wound during the raid. Yadda-yadda, the usual.
But of particular interest were the seven children and two elderly women found in the squalor of the tenement. All of them were malnourished and showed signs of neglect and physical abuse.
Finche cringed. He paused from reading to gulp down the rest of his cold coffee. He wished that there was some whiskey in it. Or perhaps amaretto. Anything would do.
One of the children was Finche's case -- the "special child." While the other children were by no means in great shape, they at least knew their names, displayed language skills, and could interact with other people. Basically normal kids, if malnourished and dirty and mean. When the police found Junior, he was in an apartment by himself save for the over one dozen dogs found also living there. All the children were detained at the precinct, then sent to the Department. All except for Junior, who is still held there.
Who in the hell do they think they are, putting him in goddamned jail? Are they trying to make my fucking job harder on me? I need to get down there and get him out before someone chews my ass out over child neglect!
Finche took a deep breath and closed the folder. He buried his face in his hands and rubbed his eyes through his eyelids until his vision was a panorama of gold and violet. This was going to be a tough one. He decided he'd go and yell at some of the rank-pullers at the station.

Finche stormed into the precinct, ready to tear somebody to bits. He shouted at various officers, who directed him to other officers to shout at. Some were stupid enough to shout back, which Finche relished, giving him an excuse to yell even more. Eventually he chewed his way to Captain MacDougal, an ivory-complected Irishman with the build of a boxer. He had a schlock of receding orange hair surrounding a bare crown. MacDougal wore a bandage on his left hand.
Finche, through clenched teeth: "Are you the officer responsible for locking up the child?"
The large policeman sighed and nodded.
After placidly enduring a minute or so of verbal abuse, during which Finche invoked human rights, bad press, civil suits and MacDougal's ancestry, MacDougal calmly and wordlessly directed Finche to follow him to the interrogation rooms. They navigated through a tan, cramped, cluttered hallway, stepping around desks, rogue chairs and the occasional couple of people that apparently had nothing better to do than talk out in the hall. MacDougal stopped and nodded toward the second scratched up one-way mirror on the right. Finche looked through it.
A filthy child -- maybe four or five -- was half crouching, half laying on his belly under a wooden table. His ribs were very prominent. His hair was tangled, shoulder-length, and a deep greasy brown. Junior wore a new-looking pair of underwear, and nothing else. His dark eyes darted around the featureless, gray-painted room, empty except for him, the table and several plates lying haphazardly about the floor.
Finche looked to MacDougal for explanation, his expression somewhere between outrage and utter confusion.
"We got him away from the other kids, who were picking on him pretty badly. Calling him dog-boy and werewolf and whatnot. He bit the shit out of one of the little girls, but to be fair she did kick him first. Anyway, we got the folding chairs out of the room so he wouldn't hurt himself." MacDougal's voice was low and placid, and Finche had to listen closely to understand him.
Finche: "But why the hell wasn't he sent back with the other kids?"
"For one, I mentioned them ribbing him pretty badly. I don't think he wanted to go back with him. Also, we were afraid he was a danger to himself and the other kids. We need a psyche-eval on him pronto."
"That child, a danger to others? You've got to be kidding."
MacDougal held his bandaged left hand up to Finche. The white gauze had a few spots of blood on it. "He bit the bejeezus out of me and Simpson when we tried to catch him. I figured that was dangerous enough. I had to go get shots this morning because of that kid."
Finche blanched a little, feeling bad for overreacting. Nasty thing, his temper. Jokingly, he tried to make amends. "At least it was your left hand."
"Yeah, great for me. I'm left-handed."
No one said anything for a few moments. Finche studied the child, as the captain said, "I was called to the scene after the raid. They wanted me to come up to apartment 516 and see this 'wild kid.' They didn't know quite what to do with him. For that matter, neither did I. There were about two dozen dogs in the room, which were being carted away by animal control, and there was this naked kid screaming and barking and trying to fight the dogcatchers. Jesus Christ, but that place stank. Dog shit and probably kid shit everywhere, it was like something curled up in there and died. I almost puked. Evans and Ricardo did. Anyway, me and some officers decided we'd catch the little bas-- well, catch the kid, and two of us got bit for our trouble."
"Did he give his name, or the name of his mother? Does he speak English at all?"
MacDougal looked at the floor and snickered, but it wasn't a happy sound. He started to say something to Finche, then stopped. Finche regarded him curiously.
MacDougal finished: "No, that boy doesn't speak English. Or Spanish. Mr. Finche, I don't think he speaks a word of person. I mean, all he did was bark and growl at us. And when they started dragging all those mutts away, he howled for them like a dog."
Finche looked at MacDougal and squinted severely.
MacDougal shrugged. "I know, I know. But I don't think he's had any real human contact. I mean, somebody had to pay rent on that shithole and come around and feed all the dogs and the boy fairly often, but...." A brief pause, then, "Seems like he's been more or less raised by them dogs. Kind of like a modern-day Jungle Book, or that Roman story of Remus and Romulus-- ya know, Roman mythology. Sick fuckin' world, ain't it?"
Noting Finche's expression of disbelief, MacDougal nodded sympathetically. "I imagine he had to fight the dogs for the food that his 'caretakers' left, because he wolfed down all we gave him. Bad choice o'words, sorry. Anyway, he tried to grab the damn plates from us. We kept feedin' him, and then fed him some more, and after a while he couldn't hold any more, I guess, and he puked. I also brought him some water, and--"
Suddenly the boy reared up. His head bounced off the bottom of the table. Not noticing, he ran from under it and started howling, whining and running around. He intermittently would lope about on all fours and semi-upright, like a chimpanzee. He threw himself against the wall a few times, trying to climb them, then picked up plastic plates and sent them sailing. They bounced off walls, floor and table. The men jumped as a plate sailed toward them, only to bounce off the plexiglass mirror. After about a minute of this, he assumed a fetal position on his side and rocked back and forth, breathing heavily.
MacDougal lit a cigarette, ignoring the yellowed plastic NO SMOKING signs. The signs had a strip of braille beneath the faded red print, which Finche assumed also forbade smoking.
MacDougal started to walk away, but paused long enough to say, "But I guess he's your responsibility now. I'm certain you'll do a better job with him." He wore a light smile as he said this.
Finche just stood there, looking at Junior. He wondered if there were any precedents for this type of thing, but he didn't think so.

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